


Scout's Honor (Remix of "Be Prepared")

by Syrena_of_the_lake



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Backstory, Bullying, Episode: s02e11 Rose-Colored Glasses, F/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-24 03:45:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12004317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/pseuds/Syrena_of_the_lake
Summary: "I don't think you're a bully, Jane." Lisbon sounded utterly sincere; she was lying, of course, most probably to herself. That was all right. Her words were still a benediction, a reprieve Jane knew he didn't deserve. But when had that ever stopped him before?





	Scout's Honor (Remix of "Be Prepared")

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ruuger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruuger/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Be Prepared](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3401510) by [Ruuger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruuger/pseuds/Ruuger). 



> Make sure to go read Ruuger's original for teenaged Jane and his carnie backstory!

Charlotte's chin trembled. "How do you get rid of bullies, Daddy?"

Jane's memory palace served up the recollection as if he hadn't mentally locked it in the contortionist's trunk a lifetime ago. A few crumpled dollar bills in his pocket, a gift of breakfast from Miss Solange — a breakfast he never did get to eat (and the cold dish of revenge was a poor substitute for a piping hot plate of ham and eggs from the town diner). The townies spotting him, throwing pebbles, mashing him into the fence until the chicken wire left patterns in his skin. The big one with the red letter jacket upping the game from pebbles to punches. His own sarcasm making a bad situation worse until the rage rose to choke his better sense, back when he still had some. He read their small, petty minds and twisted their small, petty thoughts against them in a small, petty victory... and then he took it one step further, like he always did. Upping the ante, taunting the mark.

 

_"Go back where you belong," Paddy sneered, turning the familiar barb back on his tormentors._

_"Or what, freak?"_

_"Or I'll kill you with my mind."_

 

Outside, Angela was tending the garden. She had a special knack for making things grow, especially things that had no business growing where she planted them. A white pine seedling next to the amaryllis. The funny little jack-in-the-pulpit, shade plants from the midwest braving the California sun for her sake.

"You should ask your mother," said Jane. "She'll know what to do."

"But I want them to go away for good," said Charlotte savagely.

 

_"The mind controls your body, and I can control minds. I can make your heart stop. I've done it before," he boasted. His father still knew when he was lying — and refused to point out his tell, which Paddy had told him would get them both in a heap of trouble someday, but the old man never listened — but the townies would believe anything Paddy told them. It was almost laughably easy._

_"All I have to do is... this." He snapped his fingers._

_The three bullies jumped as one. Paddy bit his cheek to keep from smiling. "Your hearbeat is slowing. Can you feel it? It's still beating — for now — but it's getting slower, slower, slower... your fingers are tingling. Slower, slower. Your lips are cold. Slower, slower. Can you feel it?"_

_Paddy felt his lips stretch in a feral smile. "Do you want to know what happens if I snap my fingers a second time?"_

_He could see the adrenaline kick in: the sudden thrill of fear, throb of pulse that would feel like a skipped heartbeat, further fueling the panic that would make them break and run, any moment now... Paddy held his breath, letting the moment stretch taut like a high wire. He bet the tall one would snap first._

_He was right._

 

Charlotte was a bright girl. He could teach her the trick of it. It would be easy, and it would work. It would keep his little girl safe from hurt. There was no real harm in it, he told himself.

Then why did his gaze stray guiltily to Angela, just outside the window?

 _Stall_ , he thought. He'd ask Charlotte who was bullying her, what they were doing ( _and then he'd find their parents and teach them to teach their kids not to bully his little girl_ ). "What does your conscience tell you?" Jane asked instead. Inwardly, he scoffed at himself. Patrick Jane, preaching about conscience? Angela would laugh at him if she heard.

No, he admitted to himself. She'd be proud. That made it easier.

"My con-chess? What does it sound like?"

"Mine sounds like Mommy," he confided.

Charlotte nodded. "Then so does mine," she declared. "Because I want to be just like you."

Jane looked sharply at his daughter, and then at his wife. Angela waved at him through the window, the trowel in her hand glinting in the afternoon light.

In for a penny...

"Do you remember what the Blue Fairy said to Pinocchio?"

Charlotte shook her head. "My, what a big nose you have?" she guessed with a giggle.

"Wrong fairy tale," Jane laughed and tugged on her pigtail. "She said 'Always let your conscience be your guide.' And do you know what that means?"

"It means we should ask Mommy what to do about bullies?"

Jane gently tweaked Charlotte's nose. "You got it, kiddo."

 

**6 years later**

"Just remember," warned Lisbon, even as she relaxed into his arms for a second dance. "No funny business."

"No funny business," he agreed. "Scout's honor."

"You were never a Boy Scout," Lisbon scoffed.

No, but he had sewn every one of Charlotte's merit badges on her Brownie sash. Bugs and Dance had been her favorites; his were Senses, Snacks and Roller Coaster Design. "I don't know what you mean, Lisbon. I take my Girl Scout cookies seriously."

Her low chuckle proved she didn't take his reply seriously, but then he hadn't meant her to.

"You didn't miss much, you know," Lisbon muttered as he swung her into a slow turn.

At first Jane was mildly affronted. It hadn't been that long since he'd last slow-danced.

"High school," Lisbon clarified. He could hear the smile in her voice.

"Oh?"

She shrugged. "I don't know why people always say high school is the best time of their lives."

"Easy," said Jane. "They have sad lives."

"Be nice." Lisbon poked him in the side.

"Okay, so tell me about it." Jane told himself he was humoring Lisbon, although he had the sneaking suspicion it was the other way around.

"It wasn't horrible, it was just something to get through. Either you crammed classes into your social life or you had no social life and got crammed into a locker between classes. Preppies, jocks, loners, cliques — every group had its bullies, even the outcasts."

"Sounds like townies," agreed Jane.

"Townies?" Lisbon laughed.

He waved her question aside. This was a night for her stories, not his. "Eh, I only ever saw three kinds: thrillseekers, tourists and—" He almost said marks, but caught himself in time. "—troublemakers." Jane was rather proud of the last-minute alliteration. "Your anthropological observations interest me much more."

Lisbon snorted but allowed him to derail the conversation, yet one more in a long list of favors he'd never be able to repay.

"So what did you do to bullies in high school, Lisbon?"

Jane wasn't quite ready to acknowledge how much her answer meant, but he was acutely aware of the fact that he had asked Angela practically the same question, years ago. She'd been his conscience for so long... but now maybe Lisbon's voice was there too. A snarky Jiminy Cricket with green eyes and a mean right hook. That could bring its own problems, but that was a worry for another night. One without fairy lights and Lisbon's hair tickling his chin.

"C'mon, you can tell me. Did you kick their asses? Convince them of the error of their ways?" 

"I mostly ignored them until they got bored and went away."

"But that's how you deal with me," Jane pouted, trying not to let on how the thought had shaken him.

She knew anyway. She always saw right through him.

Lisbon squeezed his arm. "I don't think you're a bully, Jane."

He always knew when Lisbon was telling the truth. When she wasn't, she looked him in the eye, swallowed, fingered her cross necklace and lied with a mixture of defiance and gentleness that was oddly endearing.

She was lying now, Jane knew. Not so much to him as to herself, but lying all the same.

That was all right. Her words were a blessing, even if they were wrong. He would take this reprieve he didn't deserve gratefully, for now, until he did something stupid and proved her wrong. Until then, Jane was officially Not a Bully, because Lisbon's word was as good as law to him. ( _Laws were made to be broken,_ he told himself, and then shoved the thought aside.) Tonight, he amended mentally, he would be everything Lisbon deluded herself into seeing in him.

Starting with Not a Bully.

"I could have been, though," he said lightly. "If I'd gone to high school. You have to admit I've got the look. Smart, good-looking, charismatic, athletic—"

Lisbon snorted.

"—if I'd wanted to be," continued Jane placidly. "Talented—"

"Let's not forget humble."

"Yes, let's not forget that." He looked down at her, cheek pressed against his jacket, and smiled to himself. "Do you think I could have been homecoming king?"

"I think you could have talked your way into it, sure."

"Would you be my queen?" he asked, keeping his tone deliberately light.

Lisbon shook her head. "That's not how it works, Jane. They hold elections."

"Like politics?"

"Mm-hm."

Jane rolled his eyes. "Then we'll skip it," he said decisively. "What do outcasts do at prom?"

"Probably smoke weed behind the tool shed." She shot him a warning look. "We're going to skip that too."

"Of course," Jane acquiesed. "So what's left?"

"We dance, eat the free food, watch Rigsby trying to mingle, and try not to get in any more brawls."

Jane laughed aloud. Everything was so much more fun when Lisbon went along with his plans. "I don't know what you're talking about, Lisbon. That sounds pretty good to me. All it's missing is necking in the woods."

"I said no funny business," Lisbon muttered into his shoulder. 

Jane's grin grew wider. He could always tell when she was blushing, too.


End file.
